


Skid Row

by innie



Series: Catch the Swing [2]
Category: Political Animals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:15:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26982727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: TJ's happy but can't trust that it might last.
Relationships: Thomas "T. J." Hammond & Anne Ogami, Thomas "T. J." Hammond/Original Male Character, Thomas "T.J." Hammond & Original Female Character
Series: Catch the Swing [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975777
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Skid Row

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, tenaciousmetoo!

"Doug does that, takes his shirt off in that stupid fratty way," Anne says, her voice making it clear that it's a long-standing complaint. Like he hadn't interrupted her day with his unsolicited call. She's kind, his sister-in-law.

"How quickly the honeymoon period just fades away," TJ snarks back. "There's no way — I call foul. Dougie doesn't even _wear_ t-shirts anymore." At least, not for years of being Mom's pet monkey. Who knows what he's up to now, rocking the unemployed life. TJ wonders if he should give him tips.

"He wears _undershirts_ now, like he's ninety years old," Annie gripes, but TJ can hear how thrilled she is that she gets to call the old fogey her _husband_. "I'm just waiting for him to pull out a pipe and a lawnmower."

"Getting married has really unleashed his inner kinkster, huh?" God, is he glad that Elijah takes his shirt off the right way, one hand at his hem and not between his shoulder blades.

She laughs, and the sound is so rich he nearly misses the beep of his new cell phone, warning him that his minutes are on the cusp of expiring.

"Got to go, phone's dying," he says, and she blows a kiss into the phone.

"Charge up and call Doug sometime."

"Go be important and earn a million bucks," he says in return. He's bummed to have missed Dougie, but Annie is easy to talk to, easier than people he is bound to by blood. There's a reason he'd opted for the pay-as-you-go phone and hadn't given the number to his parents or his nana.

*

It's getting to be a three-way tie, which room he likes Elijah best in: his bedroom, the back room that houses the piano, or the kitchen. He is demonstrably talented in all of those settings, but TJ has to work to hold his own — ha, he hasn't been _holding his own_ since Elijah showed up, all hotass and acutely competent — to keep up in the first two. But in the kitchen, he can just loll on one of Clark's high-backed bar stools and watch Elijah get to work, knowing he'll be fed even if he does nothing but spectate and open his mouth when prompted. Pretty sweet.

"Are you fattening me up for your carnivorous houseplant?" he asks, lazily stretching his arms out and resting his chin on one of them; the string of Elijah's hood is just brushing his fingertips. Elijah stops chopping onions and humming "Skid Row (Downtown)" — _Little Shop of Horrors_ is the intersection of their puppet and musical-theater nerdery, and Elijah never needs an excuse to sing — for long enough to snort at him, as if to say that TJ would never be able to comprehend the Byzantine twists and turns of his spectacular, sanguine plan.

Elijah uses the knife to briskly scrape the crescent moons of onions into a pan — that's Clark's too, as if the man thought he wouldn't need to feed himself in DC — and then turns, leaning forward, resting his weight on his forearms, to offer up his face. TJ figures it's only polite to pick up his own chin and kiss the man.

He always likes it when Elijah has non-oniony hands cupping his face, so he reaches out and slides a hand through those dark curls and rests his thumb on a cheekbone. Elijah smiles against his mouth like he's the one getting fed like a prince by a chef who'd forgotten to zip up his thin hooded sweatshirt or wear a shirt under it. TJ barely resists the urge to mash his face into Elijah's warm neck, to claim that spot like one of those flag-planting assholes who thought they had the right to other people's land. The onions are sizzling in the pan, their fragrance strong enough that he can hardly make out the taste of Elijah's generous mouth even if he does know its heat and softness.

Geets walks in just then, slurping from her mug loudly enough that it penetrates his dazed senses. "Fucking really?" he asks, but he's smiling too much to get the right bite into his words.

"I'm your friendly neighborino, and I could smell something delicious," she says as if he at some point in the very recent past sustained a concussion and agreed to go halfsies on Elijah.

He snags Elijah, who's moved out from behind the counter to greet her, by the waist and pulls him close. "No. Mine."

Elijah wraps an arm around him but smiles at Geets like she's got every right to be there, which is backwards. His tax dollars pay her salary. Her . . . probably not-nearly-enough-to-deal-with-a-junkie salary. "Come in," he says, enjoying the immediate reward of Elijah's kiss at the corner of his eye.

"Are you good with truffle oil?" Elijah asks her. When she shrugs, he slips out of TJ's arms and finds the bottle. "Smell that and tell me if it's too strong for you."

TJ finds himself in possession of her mug as she hands it off blindly — she doesn't even have the decency to be caffeinated; she's drinking neither coffee nor tea but literally hot water with a single sad lemon slice floating in it — and watches. Sangita closes her eyes for a moment to concentrate on the aroma, and they pop open when she realizes how much she likes what she's smelling.

"Yeah?" Elijah asks, grinning, and she grins back at him.

"Yeah," she says, and TJ puts her mug down with a sharp click and goes to set the table.

*

"Why are we always running when we talk?" he pants, following her. She runs like a gazelle, all thoughtless grace, and he feels like a train that hasn't had enough coal shoveled in.

"Why are you always talking?" she parries. She turns to look at him over her shoulder and whatever she sees gets her to stop. Not _stop_ stop, but jog in place while he bends in half, his hands on his thighs as he tries to catch his breath. "What's wrong?"

He'd been lying in bed — alone — when the thought occurred to him. And it's Sangita he wants to talk to about it; Doug and Annie would be too partisan, but Geets is the one who's been doing all the grunt work to get him clean and keep him that way. Plus she vetted Elijah, all of five weeks ago.

"Can you stop jitterbugging for a second?" he asks, trying to get his brain to work when his eyes keep snagging on her bouncing ponytail. He's surprised when she puts her arm around his waist and leads the way to one of the benches on the pedestrian path that bisects Eastern Parkway. They sink down together as a single unit, and it feels too good for him to think about moving away.

The pale grey pathway has been laid out to look like brickwork, and he keeps his eyes fixed on it until he remembers being pushed back against the exposed-brick wall of his living room when Elijah first kissed him. He has to shut his eyes to get this out.

"I've never had sex sober before," he says, waiting for her grip to tighten, for the interrogation to begin, or for her to recoil. The last is the most likely, he thinks; she's a teetotaller who doesn't even allow herself caffeine, and he has no idea where she gets her kicks.

"Okay," she says, her arm still looped around him.

He was not counting on this being a soliloquy. He makes an impatient gesture and looks over at her. Her eyes are as big and dark as Elijah's, darker maybe. She doesn't look like she's working through any big thoughts or getting ready to make a speech. She's just waiting for him to have his say. This is hardly the time for her to drop the psychic-babysitter routine.

There are birds chirping and singing in the trees above them, the branches forming a rust-colored arcade that somehow reminds him that this is his home now. "And it's good. But . . . what if it's not because we're good together? What if it's just because I'm sober?" It's not like his sobriety's been tested since he moved to Crown Heights; one, he'd never get anything past Geets, and two, Elijah works three jobs and seems to be more into relaxing by cuddling than by chilling with a drink or anything harder.

"I don't see the problem," she says, and he kicks a pebble frustratedly. Her arm tightens around him. "No, really. You like him, you think he's interesting and talented and worth your time, and guess what, he thinks the same about you, and you can bang the fuck out of each other on a nightly basis . . . _and you do_." She makes a face, like she's worrying over her poor virgin ears. "Don't go inventing problems. You're allowed to enjoy your life."

Maybe that's it — he's so used to thinking of everything he wants as automatically the wrong choice that he needs some external validation that Elijah isn't another glittering trap. "You forgot 'really fucking hot.'"

"Did I?"

He nudges her companionably with his shoulder. She lets him until she realizes he's just going to keep tipping his weight into her until she's squashed flat. She pushes back, getting him back upright so swiftly and competently he goes a little dizzy. "For a skinny dumbass, you weigh a ton."

"You should have seen me in my prime," he says, totally channeling Sophia from _The Golden Girls_ when she says _Picture it: Sicily, 1922_. "I was young and had an ass that wouldn't quit and the party couldn't start without me."

"Or _maybe_ ," she says, emphasizing her words like she thinks it'll take a couple repetitions to get them to stick, "your best days are ahead of you." She extricates herself from him and pops back up to her feet. "Now come on, we've got a run to finish."

"Taskmaster," he says, but lets her drag him up too.


End file.
